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August 18, 2010

Swedish Pirate Party To Host WikiLeaks Servers

by Sam Savage

The Swedish Pirate Party has signed an agreement to host several WikiLeaks servers in a move to protect the Web site from pressure over its release of roughly 76,000 classified documents related to the U.S. war in Afghanistan, the party said on Tuesday.

The move will also aim to strengthen WikiLeaks' ability to disclose potentially controversial content in the future, said the party, which works toward promoting greater Internet freedom.

Indeed, WikiLeaks is set to release an additional 15,000 documents about the war within the next few weeks, some of which are purportedly even more sensitive than those previously disclosed.

"The Pirate Party will provide bandwidth and hosting to WikiLeaks free of charge as part of its political mission," the group said in statement on Tuesday.

The agreement was reached during a meeting in Stockholm over the weekend with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

"We welcome the help provided by the Pirate Party," the AFP quoted Assange as saying in the statement.

"Our organizations share many values and I am looking forward to future ways we can help each other improve the world."

The Swedish Pirate Party was established in 2006 with a mission to promote greater Internet freedom. The party put itself on the map during the 2009 European elections by winning 7.1 percent of the Swedish vote. However, recent polls show support for the group has dropped for the upcoming parliamentary election set for September 19.